The PR Blog

 by Roderick (Whiskers) McNibble - Chief Correspondent for Ratty News - Aeronautical and Ornithological Division

It was a strange morning. The kind where even the crows paused mid-caw and the red dust seemed to shiver. Two weeks had passed since a ghostly cloud -  ripped straight from the pages of Stephen King’s latest nightmare -  had descended over Dusty Gulch, hanging low and twitching like it had secrets it really didn’t want to share.

One particular crow, Clive, had hovered over town nonstop since the ECloud’s arrival. His relentless caw-caw-cawing had driven one resident past the brink. Duncan “Crow-B-Gone” Thompson had reached breaking point.

And life was about to become very, very interesting for the residents of Dusty Gulch… all because of what happened 14 days earlier.

Mayor Dusty McFookit had squinted at the horizon, clutching his hat like it might protect him from rogue Wi-Fi signals searching for a brain to torment. Maurice E. Duck, perched on a biplane held together with fencing wire, adjusted his monocle and quacked with misplaced authority. Prentis Penjani unrolled a glossy brochure featuring a holographic yoga kangaroo and whispered:

“Welcome to Gulch 2.0: fully digital, fully duck-compliant, and partially haunted.”

And there it was: a digital cloud. Anchored above Dusty Gulch.

Dusty groaned. He remembered the last time Maurice touched electronics: three weeks of mysterious duck videos clogging the town hall answering machine.

Prentis Penjani and his Deputy for Digital Excellence, Maurice E. Duck, declared the future had arrived.

Starlink dishes were ripped off roofs and melted into novelty bottle-openers.
Cash was declared “a racist relic of colonial oppression” and replaced with GulchCoin™ (motto: “One duck, one vote, one transaction fee.”)

Every birth certificate, land title, parking fine, and Dulcie’s prize-winning damper recipe was uploaded to a semi-sentient, slightly drunk second-hand cloud - whose silver lining had already been sold off to reduce the national debt -  purchased from eBay for three crates of Emu Brew and a slightly dented didgeridoo.

The cloud - a former mining server rack the size of a shipping container - was towed over town by Ratty Airways’ two surviving biplanes, lashed together with fencing wire, optimism, and a very confused emu. They parked it over the cricket pitch, painted it sky-blue, and chained it to the war memorial “for security.” Maurice stationed a squad of his sneakiest ducks on top, quacking into tin cans wired to every phone line. Total surveillance. Total progress.

Circling above it all was Clive the Crow, his sharp eyes gleaming as he observed, silently monitoring events as they floated toward inevitable disaster.

The plan was put in place: 

For 14 days it worked:

• You paid for a beer by holding your phone up to Maurice’s barcode-tattooed left webbed foot.

• Fines arrived before you even committed the crime.

• Old Dingo Dave tried paying rates with a jar of 1980s two-cent pieces; the cloud responded by auctioning his cat on eBay.

• 

And then Duncan “Crow-B-Gone” Thompson raised his rifle.

Bang.

With that single, innocent morning shot, everything changed.

Duncan had only been trying to shut Clive up.

However, Clive moved his head ever so slightly at the crucial moment  - the bullet arced, climbed, and (because this is Dusty Gulch) punched a neat little hole straight through the eCloud. A sound like a thousand modems screaming collided with a hiss like a tyre going flat on the Birdsville Track.

Instantly:

• The Dusty Dingo’s till froze mid-pour. Half the pub’s beers were stuck at three-quarter froth.

• GulchCoin™ plunged to minus forty-seven dollars, then tried to buy itself back while sending eBay invoices and love letters to mailboxes.

• The council rates portal redirected to a Kamala Harris video.

• Every traffic light (both of them) flashed amber in perfect Morse code for “QUACK QUACK QUACK”, accompanied by 3D holographic pigeons performing interpretive dance.

• Maurice’s surveillance ducks received an update replacing all audio with whale opera, and occasionally juggled server chips for amusement.

By sundown, Dusty Gulch had reverted to a full barter economy:

• A stubby bought two smokes.

• Three smokes bought a pie.

• One slightly offended wombat could clear your tab for a month.

Mayor McFookit tried to declare a state of emergency, but his phone just played the first four seconds of “I love to have a beer with Duncan” on loop. Duncan, now local hero, strolled into the Dusty Dingo with the offending rifle over his shoulder and a fresh roo tail for the barbie.

“Reckon I saved the town,” he said, accepting a warm Emu Brew paid with an actual five-dollar note someone found in a couch. Even Clive forgave him for the attempt on his life. 

Maurice E. Duck was last seen paddling furiously toward the Territory border on a lilo made from shredded GulchCoin™ whitepapers, muttering about “decentralised revenge.”

High above, the punctured cloud slowly deflated, leaking ones and zeroes like digital fairy floss into the red dust. And somewhere in the shadows, Clive the Crow cawed knowingly, as if to say, “I told you this would be fun.”